Photography in the Alps

As I sit in front of my computer I can hear the rain falling outside. So I thought it was about time I wrote a blog about my much warmer and sunnier trip to the Alps.
I had a great holiday in the French Alps with my wife this year. I’ve been wanting to go back to the Alps for a while now and although this was a holiday and not a photography trip the camera gear was definitely coming along. I think the key to combining a holiday and photography is to get out early if possible so you have the rest of the day to do things together. The light’s best then anyway. I have to say my wife is very understanding when it comes to my photography.

In fact the best light of our whole stay in the Alps was during one evening. It was looking a bit stormy with the possibility of a good sunset so I got the camera gear together and strode purposefully away from where we were staying. As the sun set it started raining in the distance. The fantastic sunset colours were picked up by the falling rain and it literally “rained a sunset”. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I took a series of images where the distant mountains more or less disappeared behind a veil of sunset hues. It was an absolutely fantastic evening. I just got back before a massive thunderstorm hit us.

I was very fortunate with the weather conditions. Great sunset ,good morning light, including broken cloud early one morning producing shafts of sunlight illuminating the mountain peaks. Magic. Unusually for me I used a longer focal length lens to compress the perspective of the mountain ranges around me. I think this approach worked well. I generally reach for my wide angle lenses when I’m composing landscape images. Using my 70mm to 200mm zoom most of the time made a nice change . I did have to be careful to make sure each image had the required depth of field though. Depth of field really drops off as the focal length gets longer.

We also had a fantastic trip to some underground caves right up in the alps. Again it was a great photo opportunity, especially because three rivers converged in the caves forming an underground lake. Not only did I have beautifully lit stalagmites to photograph but also the added bonus of their reflections. A good reflection always lifts an image I think.
So all in all a very successful trip. It was a great holiday which I combined well with some very enjoyable photography. I think photography really adds to the enjoyment of any trip. Once we were home I still had my pictures to go through and edit which brought back many great memories